8 ms·

HN headline is misleading. Actual claim on site: > 40% of SF traffic fatalities in 2019 involved drivers making left turns who didn’t see the person in the cr

HN headline is misleading. Actual claim on site: > 40% of SF traffic fatalities in 2019 involved drivers making left turns who didn’t see the person in the crosswalk until it was too late.

olivermarks 5y ago
Also of note: SF is a very pedestrian dense city with people wandering into the street looking at phones, not paying attention...and sadly a large number of substance abuse casualties endangering themselves and others. This reality has got increasingly worse since the iphone launch last decade, it's a huge problem.
- spamizbad 5y ago
  Why are car drivers taking turns so quickly they cannot stop fast enough to not kill someone on a crosswalk?
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    Probably focused on, and wanting to get out of the way of, other oncoming cars.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Without going into unreasonable drivers (that surely are plenty), how many turns do one make in a trip there, what is the speed on the outgoing street, and what visibility do they have over the new street. Anything you do is an exercise of balancing risks. Breaking too hard is a risk, taking time slow at a fast street is a risk, and turning too fast is a risk.
    - spamizbad 5y ago
      The problem is, as a pedestrian, I have no way of knowing if vehicle intends to take a left turn across my crosswalk UNLESS they come to a complete stop and I can see their turn signal. So even if I am fully alert I ultimately have to trust that you will not run me over in the crosswalk if you are traveling fast.
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        If you as a pedestrian are having this problem, it's because the road geometry is completely unfit for the purpose and the cars have absolutely no chance of reacting to your moves either. This should only happen on very low speed streets. It's certainly not your fault either. Somebody is guilty of mass manslaughter.
  - asdffdsa 5y ago
    The drivers are still 100% at fault, but left-turns are difficult because there's oncoming traffic if it's unprotected. Stopping when there's incoming traffic feasible isn't feasible. The best move for drivers making unprotected left turns in busy intersections would be to wait until the end of the light: no more oncoming traffic, so the driver can wait until the last jaywalkers pass. The best solution from a city-planning perspective could be more protected left turn lights installed at those intersections with lots of accidents from left-hand turns.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    You can keep asking that question, but physics doesn't care about who is morally right. Everyone should pay more attention to increase safety. Drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, everyone.
    - estebank 5y ago
      Alternatively, instead of relying on people not acting like people, we could design the streets themselves to be safer for everyone. Doing so most of the time has a lot of pushback due to the perception from drivers that doing so is somehow punishing them.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        As someone who drives more than walks (except for my daily three mile recreational walks), I agree. Roads are often designed for speed, not for multi-user safety. I think city streets should be narrower in general, to the point of being single-lane in residential neighborhoods. Changing speed signs doesn't really have a strong effect. Changing design works.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Probably true, but being distracted or burned out shouldn't be punished by being run over... you could equally argue that lots of those drivers are distractedly looking at their phones too?
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    It's a fact, a lot of people whether driving or walking are looking at their map directions on phones. If you're driving you have to really watch out for mad drivers - if you're turning into a gap in oncoming traffic it can be a huge problem if some clown accelerates up to you as you try to make a turn while pedestrian(s) with no peripheral vision skills walk out into the road in your path oblivious to what could be a pretty nasty accident. It would also be really helpful if US drivers could learn to use their indicators to signal their intentions to everyone.
- matsemann 5y ago
  Typical driver mindset, blaming those they run over. If anything, the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more apparent in distracted drivers, not pedestrians. Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later complain about cyclists not using them?
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    I was speaking mostly as a pedestrian. The word 'victim' is offensive in this context. If I do drive in SF I do so at a snails pace as there are so many people there who chose to think the laws of physics are irrelevant to them and that if they are injured it is someone else's fault. This goes back years and so does victim scamming: I was picking my (then young) son up on a rainy night from outside the Davies Symphony hall where he'd been performing in a youth choir. I fortunately saw a guy sneak behind my car and lie in the gutter: he hoped I'd reverse and touch him to get out of the parking space at which point he could cry out in pain and sue. Happens all the time. Who's the victim in this situation?
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    > Typical driver mindset You're building your argument on a borderline ad-hominem assumption > the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more apparent in distracted drivers then on something that may or may not be true and honestly doesn't really mean anything > Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later complain about cyclists not using them? and accusing the person some more.
    - matsemann 5y ago
      You skipped the main part, where I called them out for victim blaming. Nothing to say on that?
- soperj 5y ago
  Wow, pretty brutal victim blaming here. You're driving on average a 4000 pounds vehicle at speed, you need to be the one responsible for it. "They got in my way" doesn't really fly.
  - kodah 5y ago
    Why are both not responsible? Something seems broken and I don't think it's just drivers. As someone else noted, a lot of these accidents (73%) do not occur at a crosswalk. I could only think that means parking lots and people j-walking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465068 The rush to push blame on either drivers or pedestrians with these kind of vague statistics is really weird.
    - soperj 5y ago
      What would happen if the driver was walking instead? They'd bump into each other and possibly even fall down. If you are operating something that has the ability to kill someone, you need to be responsible for it.
      - kodah 5y ago
        73% of these incidents are at non-intersections and 80% of them are at night. I'm not sure how much of that a driver can be totally responsible for. If a lot of people are dying at non-intersections that tells me the city likely has some obligation to investigate unsafe locations people are crossing at and make them safer. Point being, it doesn't mean it's the driver or pedestrians fault, but it's also certainly not automatically the person operating a machines fault. That's just silly.
        soperj 5y ago
        >it's also certainly not automatically the person operating a machines fault It is. If you work on a factory floor and you are operating machinery and kill someone, it's your fault. If you play ice hockey and accidently stick someone in the face, it's your fault. If you kill someone with your car because it's night time...
- belligeront 5y ago
  Shouldn't the person driving 2000+ lbs of machinery be responsible for how they are operating rather than a person trying to walk in a crosswalk?
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    It is a shared space, which belongs both to cars as well as pedestrians. So the responsibility for safety is shared as well.
    - vegardx 5y ago
      Typically in scenarios where it's supposedly a shared responsibility, and one is at a significant disadvantage, where errors from either side has massively skewed consequences, you often want to put most of the responsibility on the one with ability to cause the most harm. And I don't agree with it being a shared space. In a crosswalk cars are entering pedestrian space. It's not pedestrians entering car space. But that might just be telling on what continent I live.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        I think it probably matters what your preconceptions are. I don't know what continent has to do with it. I'm pragmatic. It's a place cars and pedestrians both have an expectation to be. Therefore, it's shared. We use signals to make it safer, but nobody should ever lose sight of the reality that they may find a car there, or a pedestrian there, at the same time.
gostsamo 5y ago
HN has headline length limit.
- caminante 5y ago
  Not the issue. OP made subtle re-phrasing tweaks that weren't forced by length limits and changed the meaning.
nradov 5y ago
I suspect thicker A pillars are also part of the problem. The A pillars have gotten a lot thicker in recent model years. That improves passive crash safety by making the car body stronger and allows for more airbags. But it also reduces visibility when turning. Sometimes drivers literally can't see pedestrians without moving their heads to the side.
- whymauri 5y ago
  For a particularly dramatic example of this, Tom Scott made a video about an intersection in the UK that's poorly designed for visibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU
  - kansface 5y ago
    This is a really good explanation.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Does not stopping completely, even if both roads are totally empty, not cause a big penalty in the UK? In Denmark you would get one mark out of three on your license if you so much as creep across that STOP line. It's full stop or risk a ticket (200 euro at a minimum) and 1/3 of the way from a new license (likely 1300-1800€). While a bad intersection it seems to me that the culture is insanely bad looking at how many dangerous drivers are passing behind him in the short amount of time he is there. I'm shocked,really.
- silon42 5y ago
  This is a big problem for cyclists and especially e-scooters because they can match speeds much closer to a car approaching the intersection whilst remaining hidden behind the A-pillar.
- hpkuarg 5y ago
  Definitely. Manufacturers are incentivized (by law and regulation) to optimize for surviving a collision, and less so for avoiding a collision entirely by enhancing visibility. I suppose the amount of attention the average driver pays to the road necessitates the former as a matter of public policy, but...
clairity 5y ago
i actually saw one of these accidents a few years ago. a woman a few steps behind her companion got thrown over the hood and to the side (miraculously not seriously injured though). the car started from a stop light, and probably hit her at around 15-20 mph. it was unbelievable that the driver didn't recognize the pedestrians waiting at the light and further didn't look at all when he started moving. that is, until the driver admitted to being distracted (by phone, passenger, and music simultaneously). the biggest bang for buck here is to reduce any and all distraction in driving (including touchscreen controls), rather than trying to slow cars down further or make cars safer.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Cars and pedestrians simply should not have green light in the same direction at the same time. If they didn't do this (as many countries don't) the driver you saw would have to also run a red light to hit someone while turning. Pedestrians and cyclists should also always have a stop sign far enough ahead of the stop line for cars that you can't miss them (no pun intended). For an example the Netherlands have a lot of these kinds of safety features build in to their roads. Scandinavia too. Lots to learn..
  - jopsen 5y ago
    It might be more to do with stop signs, driver training/tests and poor visibility. SF has lots of stop signs, technically a pedestrian barely has to look. And cars don't expect there to be pedestrians. (Generally, they are so annoying drivers have little respect for full stop signs, and speed up aggressively) Also the US has notoriously poor driver training and tests. I failed my driver license tests twice in Denmark because for failure turn my head and look out for pedestrians I knew weren't there :) (It teaches drivers when and where to look). SF also has a habit of allowing street parking really close to intersections. In general street parking is bad for visibility as drivers can't see pedestrians. But in particular around intersections in SF you frequently aren't visible as a pedestrian waiting to cross. Anyways, that's what I felt was sketchy about traffic living in SF. In Denmark I do lots of left turns and pedestrians isn't an issue, probably because I know they have a green light. And I've been taught to look out.

HN headline is misleading. Actual claim on site: > 40% of SF traffic fatalities in 2019 involved drivers making left turns who didn’t see the person in the crosswalk until it was too late.

olivermarks 5y ago

Also of note: SF is a very pedestrian dense city with people wandering into the street looking at phones, not paying attention...and sadly a large number of substance abuse casualties endangering themselves and others. This reality has got increasingly worse since the iphone launch last decade, it's a huge problem.

spamizbad 5y ago
Why are car drivers taking turns so quickly they cannot stop fast enough to not kill someone on a crosswalk?
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Probably focused on, and wanting to get out of the way of, other oncoming cars.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Without going into unreasonable drivers (that surely are plenty), how many turns do one make in a trip there, what is the speed on the outgoing street, and what visibility do they have over the new street. Anything you do is an exercise of balancing risks. Breaking too hard is a risk, taking time slow at a fast street is a risk, and turning too fast is a risk.
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    The problem is, as a pedestrian, I have no way of knowing if vehicle intends to take a left turn across my crosswalk UNLESS they come to a complete stop and I can see their turn signal. So even if I am fully alert I ultimately have to trust that you will not run me over in the crosswalk if you are traveling fast.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      If you as a pedestrian are having this problem, it's because the road geometry is completely unfit for the purpose and the cars have absolutely no chance of reacting to your moves either. This should only happen on very low speed streets. It's certainly not your fault either. Somebody is guilty of mass manslaughter.
- asdffdsa 5y ago
  The drivers are still 100% at fault, but left-turns are difficult because there's oncoming traffic if it's unprotected. Stopping when there's incoming traffic feasible isn't feasible. The best move for drivers making unprotected left turns in busy intersections would be to wait until the end of the light: no more oncoming traffic, so the driver can wait until the last jaywalkers pass. The best solution from a city-planning perspective could be more protected left turn lights installed at those intersections with lots of accidents from left-hand turns.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  You can keep asking that question, but physics doesn't care about who is morally right. Everyone should pay more attention to increase safety. Drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, everyone.
  - estebank 5y ago
    Alternatively, instead of relying on people not acting like people, we could design the streets themselves to be safer for everyone. Doing so most of the time has a lot of pushback due to the perception from drivers that doing so is somehow punishing them.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      As someone who drives more than walks (except for my daily three mile recreational walks), I agree. Roads are often designed for speed, not for multi-user safety. I think city streets should be narrower in general, to the point of being single-lane in residential neighborhoods. Changing speed signs doesn't really have a strong effect. Changing design works.
blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Probably true, but being distracted or burned out shouldn't be punished by being run over... you could equally argue that lots of those drivers are distractedly looking at their phones too?
- olivermarks 5y ago
  It's a fact, a lot of people whether driving or walking are looking at their map directions on phones. If you're driving you have to really watch out for mad drivers - if you're turning into a gap in oncoming traffic it can be a huge problem if some clown accelerates up to you as you try to make a turn while pedestrian(s) with no peripheral vision skills walk out into the road in your path oblivious to what could be a pretty nasty accident. It would also be really helpful if US drivers could learn to use their indicators to signal their intentions to everyone.
matsemann 5y ago
Typical driver mindset, blaming those they run over. If anything, the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more apparent in distracted drivers, not pedestrians. Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later complain about cyclists not using them?
- olivermarks 5y ago
  I was speaking mostly as a pedestrian. The word 'victim' is offensive in this context. If I do drive in SF I do so at a snails pace as there are so many people there who chose to think the laws of physics are irrelevant to them and that if they are injured it is someone else's fault. This goes back years and so does victim scamming: I was picking my (then young) son up on a rainy night from outside the Davies Symphony hall where he'd been performing in a youth choir. I fortunately saw a guy sneak behind my car and lie in the gutter: he hoped I'd reverse and touch him to get out of the parking space at which point he could cry out in pain and sue. Happens all the time. Who's the victim in this situation?
- Toutouxc 5y ago
  > Typical driver mindset You're building your argument on a borderline ad-hominem assumption > the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more apparent in distracted drivers then on something that may or may not be true and honestly doesn't really mean anything > Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later complain about cyclists not using them? and accusing the person some more.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    You skipped the main part, where I called them out for victim blaming. Nothing to say on that?
soperj 5y ago
Wow, pretty brutal victim blaming here. You're driving on average a 4000 pounds vehicle at speed, you need to be the one responsible for it. "They got in my way" doesn't really fly.
- kodah 5y ago
  Why are both not responsible? Something seems broken and I don't think it's just drivers. As someone else noted, a lot of these accidents (73%) do not occur at a crosswalk. I could only think that means parking lots and people j-walking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465068 The rush to push blame on either drivers or pedestrians with these kind of vague statistics is really weird.
  - soperj 5y ago
    What would happen if the driver was walking instead? They'd bump into each other and possibly even fall down. If you are operating something that has the ability to kill someone, you need to be responsible for it.
    - kodah 5y ago
      73% of these incidents are at non-intersections and 80% of them are at night. I'm not sure how much of that a driver can be totally responsible for. If a lot of people are dying at non-intersections that tells me the city likely has some obligation to investigate unsafe locations people are crossing at and make them safer. Point being, it doesn't mean it's the driver or pedestrians fault, but it's also certainly not automatically the person operating a machines fault. That's just silly.
      - soperj 5y ago
        >it's also certainly not automatically the person operating a machines fault It is. If you work on a factory floor and you are operating machinery and kill someone, it's your fault. If you play ice hockey and accidently stick someone in the face, it's your fault. If you kill someone with your car because it's night time...
belligeront 5y ago
Shouldn't the person driving 2000+ lbs of machinery be responsible for how they are operating rather than a person trying to walk in a crosswalk?
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  It is a shared space, which belongs both to cars as well as pedestrians. So the responsibility for safety is shared as well.
  - vegardx 5y ago
    Typically in scenarios where it's supposedly a shared responsibility, and one is at a significant disadvantage, where errors from either side has massively skewed consequences, you often want to put most of the responsibility on the one with ability to cause the most harm. And I don't agree with it being a shared space. In a crosswalk cars are entering pedestrian space. It's not pedestrians entering car space. But that might just be telling on what continent I live.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I think it probably matters what your preconceptions are. I don't know what continent has to do with it. I'm pragmatic. It's a place cars and pedestrians both have an expectation to be. Therefore, it's shared. We use signals to make it safer, but nobody should ever lose sight of the reality that they may find a car there, or a pedestrian there, at the same time.

gostsamo 5y ago

HN has headline length limit.

caminante 5y ago
Not the issue. OP made subtle re-phrasing tweaks that weren't forced by length limits and changed the meaning.

nradov 5y ago

I suspect thicker A pillars are also part of the problem. The A pillars have gotten a lot thicker in recent model years. That improves passive crash safety by making the car body stronger and allows for more airbags. But it also reduces visibility when turning. Sometimes drivers literally can't see pedestrians without moving their heads to the side.

whymauri 5y ago
For a particularly dramatic example of this, Tom Scott made a video about an intersection in the UK that's poorly designed for visibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU
- kansface 5y ago
  This is a really good explanation.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Does not stopping completely, even if both roads are totally empty, not cause a big penalty in the UK? In Denmark you would get one mark out of three on your license if you so much as creep across that STOP line. It's full stop or risk a ticket (200 euro at a minimum) and 1/3 of the way from a new license (likely 1300-1800€). While a bad intersection it seems to me that the culture is insanely bad looking at how many dangerous drivers are passing behind him in the short amount of time he is there. I'm shocked,really.
silon42 5y ago
This is a big problem for cyclists and especially e-scooters because they can match speeds much closer to a car approaching the intersection whilst remaining hidden behind the A-pillar.
hpkuarg 5y ago
Definitely. Manufacturers are incentivized (by law and regulation) to optimize for surviving a collision, and less so for avoiding a collision entirely by enhancing visibility. I suppose the amount of attention the average driver pays to the road necessitates the former as a matter of public policy, but...

clairity 5y ago

i actually saw one of these accidents a few years ago. a woman a few steps behind her companion got thrown over the hood and to the side (miraculously not seriously injured though). the car started from a stop light, and probably hit her at around 15-20 mph. it was unbelievable that the driver didn't recognize the pedestrians waiting at the light and further didn't look at all when he started moving. that is, until the driver admitted to being distracted (by phone, passenger, and music simultaneously). the biggest bang for buck here is to reduce any and all distraction in driving (including touchscreen controls), rather than trying to slow cars down further or make cars safer.

Dah00n 5y ago
Cars and pedestrians simply should not have green light in the same direction at the same time. If they didn't do this (as many countries don't) the driver you saw would have to also run a red light to hit someone while turning. Pedestrians and cyclists should also always have a stop sign far enough ahead of the stop line for cars that you can't miss them (no pun intended). For an example the Netherlands have a lot of these kinds of safety features build in to their roads. Scandinavia too. Lots to learn..
- jopsen 5y ago
  It might be more to do with stop signs, driver training/tests and poor visibility. SF has lots of stop signs, technically a pedestrian barely has to look. And cars don't expect there to be pedestrians. (Generally, they are so annoying drivers have little respect for full stop signs, and speed up aggressively) Also the US has notoriously poor driver training and tests. I failed my driver license tests twice in Denmark because for failure turn my head and look out for pedestrians I knew weren't there :) (It teaches drivers when and where to look). SF also has a habit of allowing street parking really close to intersections. In general street parking is bad for visibility as drivers can't see pedestrians. But in particular around intersections in SF you frequently aren't visible as a pedestrian waiting to cross. Anyways, that's what I felt was sketchy about traffic living in SF. In Denmark I do lots of left turns and pedestrians isn't an issue, probably because I know they have a green light. And I've been taught to look out.